Want to buy something good for the holidays?

Saturday, December 18 2004 3:37 pm

Chek out this record company... they have some great music, and they're all around just a bunch of great folks, from all I can tell. Plus its Creative Commons licensed, that's a big plus. Yeah, these guys are ethical and holders of fantastic art. Support them! Listen to some music, then download the albums, if you like it!

Finishing up

Sunday, November 28 2004 4:52 pm

Hey people. I just wanted to make clear what's going to be happening this December. As of right now, I'm spending a lot of time finishing work for school which I fell behind on. I'm having a lot of difficulty with that.

Over this break, which for me is a month long, I have a very interesting job. It's being provided by a good friend of mine. Basically, I'm going to be paid quite a significant amount to stay home and code, as I understand it. I know, it's the mana-job from heaven. I should be thankful.

I do believe I'll have some free time in-between all that, then. The question is, what am I going to do with it? If I really am going to continue Lingo as a project, I should work on that. But I'm not sure if that's what I want to do, or if it is the best thing I can do. I'm also working on my Blender skills very heavily. What all this comes down to is that you'll probably get one of two things come from me, artistically, this December (or released early January), but I'm not sure which they will be.. either a bunch of comics, or a short animated film, of which I've already written the script for.

If you have a preference either way, I'd like to hear it. As always, my email is below. Thanks.

Peace IS possible.

RMS collaboration comic: finished and viewable

Sunday, October 3 2004 11:42 pm

Yes, I've finally finished the comic I was collaborating on with Stallman for ever so long. Stallman put up his copy on his own website, which is directly viewable here. (By the way, have you ever visited Stallman's political notes page? I check there every few days to see what articles he's linked to. In an indirect way, it holds some responsibility for my illustrating this comic he wrote.) The copy RMS has on his website is very low quality, however, and I personally think the artwork is worthy of being looked at in its full-sized glory. Well, technically, the title on Stallman's copy is different. You can see it full sized with the newspaper-like banner here.

This isn't a permanent location to the comic, so don't link to it, unless you're willing to check back here soon and find the proper link. But as you can see, the notice on the bottom of the image gives you rights to copy the image, so following those you could put a copy on your own website, or email it to friends, or any such thing. In fact, I encourage that you do.

You also might note, in examining this comic I so recently completed, that the domain name lingocomic.com isn't anywhere on it. dustycloud.org is, though, and with reason: this soon will be the domain name under which I'm publishing everything. I've come to terms with the fact that Lingo is not going to be my life's work, and I have many projects which I want to work on and want to have up. Lingo will be a part of dustycloud.org, and I will continue to update it. (More often, actually, since I've now finished the Stallman comic; I already have two new comics in the works.) There's a lot of history behind the "Dusty Cloud" portion of the new domain name, too much to go into in a simple news post, but I promise to share it shortly. I'll write up a brief article, or some such thing. The .org aspect is simple, though. It doesn't make sense for me to be .com; my purpose in running this site was never never to make money, but to share whatever talents I have with the world. I may, some day, attempt to make money here to sustain myself. Money should be a means, and never an end. If people would only recognize this, we wouldn't have nearly so many problems in this world as we do today.

I've finished it!

I'm so excited about it that I have to post this before I upload the thing. It's just that awesome. I'll upload the final version in a second. Well, probably final. Stallman still needs to officially accept it. But I'll just assume that he's accepted it as good and release it. Heck, if worst comes to worst, I can probably fix any thing he has to complain about quickly.

Happy birthday to me

Sunday, September 26 2004 10:45 am

Hey. Did you know it is my birthday today? Well, now you know. I'm twenty... I can't believe I've finally left my teenage years. My teenage life was like a movie that starts out really bad, and you just want to leave it, but then it gets really interesting. But the end of the movie is one of those not-endings they give you so that you have to see the sequel. I guess my twenties are going to be the sequel to my teenage years then.

Can you believe it? I finally finished the coloring of the Stallman comic. Now all I have to do is piece it together and give it words. It'll be my birthday present to myself and everyone, I suppose.

Philhurst

Sunday, September 12 2004 7:27 pm

Ha ha ha... alright.. while you're waiting for the new comic, I figure I'll post this up. it's really junk, and it shows off how much my handwriting sucks. But I anticipate that it will infuriate Jay. I give you: Philhurst. This ingenious comic manages to summarize approximately fifty percent of the material of a certain comic Jay enjoys. I'll let you figure out what.

Accomplishments my audience will never appreciate

Sunday, September 12 2004 5:03 pm

Excitement. It seems that I've finally managed to write some code that I can use. I'm posting this via a script I wrote in elisp.

But I hear you, you who far off in the distance call forward, "Why the hell would I care? Where are my damn comics?" To which I reply, "Uh, they're coming really soon, I promise." What... why are you looking at me like you don't believe me? I'm being honest.

No, actually, in honesty the Stallman comic has just a bit of coloring to do in the last panel (and I mean, like, the tiniest amount) and then all I have to do is lay it out and put in the text. So I guess... if I don't get it done soon, I really don't have an excuse, and you have permission to make fun of me for being lazy. I really won't be able to defend against it.

The Mystery of the Laundry Basket

Wednesday, August 25 2004 8:10 pm

Yep... still working on that Stallman comic. I think this whole thing would be faster if we spoke in person, or something. I think it's just about done, then... there's something else I should fix up. Who knew Stallman would be more of a perfectionist about my artwork than I am?

In between all that I'm unpacking my room, teaching myself elisp... yeah, that kind of stuff. I'm supposed to be doing laundry too tonight. But I've been trying to figure out what on earth to do with this mysterious... laundry problem... that I've been dealing with for years.

I'm dumping things in my laundry basket when I hit a pair of jeans. These jeans I have worn once and only once, as far as I can remember. So they aren't exactly dirty, and it's a waste to wash them. I'll wear them again. But what to do in the meantime? Throwing them back in the dresser with all the clean clothes doesn't seem like such a good idea. I'd do what I used to do and just throw them on the floor, but I'm trying to organize myself better. Anyone have any advice?

Tabs or elegance?

Saturday, August 7 2004 5:29 pm

Okay, first off, update. The Stallman comic did get mostly done, but there's been some discussion between RMS and I about how things should go. Especially regarding buildings. Yep. This last panel has been quite difficult. So sorry about the delay.

The following is the reason I brought this meeting to order in the first place. I am having some issues deciding what to do with the site layout. I was planning on replacing the middle of those tabs with nice pretty CSS boxes, but I'm having trouble doing that. But in the process of working on the new tab system, I came up with a much more elegant design. And when I say elegant, I do really mean elegant... to the extreme. And I can't make up my mind on whether I should work on the new tab layout or just go with this. So I want you to give me your opinion. It's really simple: just hit the little link at this bottom of this post that is my signature. Then send me one'a thems "emails."

Determination at last

Monday, August 2 2004 5:26 pm

This afternoon I took a nap for approximately two hours. I awoke with my head so swimming with dreams that I swore I must have slept for twenty. I also awoke with something else, something I haven't had in a long time. Determination.

The Stallman comic will be completed tonight.

Time for an update...

Sunday, July 25 2004 6:04 pm

Wow. I've just left this site to run dry for quite a while. Thinking about that, I realized I really needed to come in here and... update it. Even just if for the sake of updating.

Between that last post and this one, my life got insane. I guess I thought that the summer would be easier, but that was before I pondered exactly what running two jobs and taking classes full time entailed. Precisely, being a complete and total lack of time. And lots of stress too. Lets not forget the stress.

So I haven't had time for this comic in forever, though I wish I had. Well, okay, I have had some time, in which I have been learning some other things. Blender, for example. You can view something I made yesterday, if you so like. Be warned, while some people think it is cute, others immediately react with great horror. And I'll be honest with you... I'm not sure what animal it is. I think its somewhat of a cross between a monkey and a camel. Someone suggested I call it a monkamel, or kamonkey. I'm not going to do that, but you can.

Oh! Right! Something very exciting... I'm working on the Stallman comic again! Whoohoo!

Stress must have gotten to me...

See, this is why I'm glad nobody checks my website other than my close friends. I'm allowed to let this get a little blog-like and nobody will yell at me for it.

But maybe they should.

I ranted on here about how frustrated I was with Stallman and such. Honestly, it really was a frustrating thing, but perhaps I should have taken it a bit more internally. It is true that we all need a place to rant, but this may be a bit personal to be ranting about on here. As things turned out, I eventually sent Stallman an email talking about the stress I was feeling... and many such things, and how I didn't know I could finish the comic by making such changes right now. The letter I got back was concerned about my well being, noting that I have no obligation to work on the comic... that if I do have the time, he would indeed like me to try finishing it without making too many changes, or some such thing, provided it didn't muck up my life.

Honestly, I now feel bad about what I wrote previously. Perhaps Jay is right. Since he now works at the gradeschool I went to when I was younger, I asked him to give my old teacher my website, so she could check it out. He replied, "But your blog is so depressing. You should separate it out from the rest of the site."

I'm trying to think about why that is. I'm really not so depressed these days.. just stressed. And honestly? I feel bad about being so stressed. Some of my friends at school have it much harder than I do. I don't work too many hours a week at my job. I'm only taking three courses this quarter/trimester (depends on your perspective). I am engaged in many side-projects... but do those even count? Yesterday, people kept telling me I didn't look well, or that I appeared tired. Last night I got about sixteen hours of sleep. I do feel better now, but sixteen hours is a lot... and it makes me think that I should feel at a luxury even to have such an opportunity. Many of my friends don't.

This summer I'll be working two jobs... I just got accepted for my job as a Residential Advisor for this summer. That's good, as I'll have my room and board accounted for. It'll be slightly more stress, but I feel I can handle it. I plan on getting a laptop so I can work on my projects as I sit at the front desk and I have nothing better to do.

The trip

Saturday, May 22 2004 1:17 pm

Okay, Jay is harassing me to put up this little post. I'm weak, so
I've consented. Besides, if he doesn't, he will probably show up some
time again while I'm studying for finals, and I will end up failing,
or some such suckiness.

A few weeks back I was woken up in the middle of the night by a
phone call. It was Miles, Jay and Matt driving around in the car,
calling me and waking me up for no good reason whatsoever. I fell
asleep early that night, at about 8:30. I don't know why. So I was
kind of groggy when I picked up the phone. A few minutes of such
inanity was enough to make me hang up the phone.

At about ten thirty I get another call (waking me up from my sleep
once again). I'm told there's a guest downstairs. Now I figure, it's
probably Jay and Miles. But what the fuck would Jay and Miles be
doing in Lake Forest right now? So maybe not.

As I walk down the spiral stairs, whose heads to I see but Jay's
and Miles'. And from around the corner, out pops Matt. I have the
most random friends ever.

So we went and randomly popped by my friend/ex-girlfriend Nikki's
house. We left tugging her roommate around. Then we went to a
grocery store and Denny's and crap... that part of the story isn't so
interesting.

Gragh!!!!

Okay.. I'm cursing in words that don't exist. That's generally a
sign that things are not going well. And boy are they ever not
going well. I'm in a bad bad mood, let me tell you.

I've heard that Stallman is a stubborn guy, and frustrating to work
with, but really.. I must have had no idea. Let me just tell you how
frustrating this has gotten. I'm almost done with the comic, alright?
I'm on frame 3. Actually, take a look at frame 3. Does that look good to
you? It looks good to me. But no, I'm being told that human beings
need to FACE each other when they shake hands.

Alright, I'm not entirely sure how true that is. I just know that
I don't want to make them do it, because I just want to be done with
this comic right now, and furthermore, I suck at drawing profile
views. Why can't the way they are now be good enough as it is? So
frustrating...

Blah

Wednesday, May 19 2004 6:23 pm

I tried to think of a better title, but "blah" was the best I could come up with. Oh well. Can you tell I'm not in the best of moods? I just feel... like I should have many more things done than I do at the moment. I feel like I should be updating this thing more, too... but I'm bad at that, it seems. And it is kind of a shame that I'm so bad at that too, because I have plenty of things to share.

Especially exciting is that.... SuperTux reached Milestone 1! Go download it! It's quite a lot of fun... there are GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac versions available for download... and I'm in the credits twice! Yeah... I've been spending quite a bit of time on this. I can't tell if I'm spending too much time, or not enough time though. I mean, a lot of other individuals have spent more time than I have on it. But I'm also doing so many other things. Should I actually be focusing on those other things more than this? I don't know! Yarg.

Uhm... next up. I'm seriously nearly complete with that Stallman comic now... no, seriously. I just have to color the last panel! But it is taking me way too long.. and I'm really starting to get sick of it, honestly. I just want it to be done and over with. It has been fun, don't get me wrong. But there's a point where you've just been staring at the same three panels for too many months, and you just want them to just pick up their own tiny brushes and start painting themselves. Then assemble themselves into a nicely developed comic, and run across the little wires and wireless waves of the Internets, directly into Stallman's inbox, and onto my webpage, complete with a little post. Is that too much to ask? Yeah, I guess so. :\

Okay, next piece... which is just this whole "holy crap" kind of thing. I received the most amazing award for the work I did in the campaign to keep my school open. It is really unbelievably beautiful. I have to upload a picture of it or something, so people can see it. Thanks to everyone for that. I mean it.

Other than that... uhm... I'm also trying to redesign this website with more CSS and less images. But I'm having a difficult time doing that. I'm also learning emacs lisp, hoping that I'll be able to use it to make all the little tiny chores take less time. Do I have too many projects? Hard to tell... well, let's consider that I'm writing a reasonably sized story for one of my papers. Wait, didn't I just do that last trimester? (Alright, they call them quarters at my school, but that's simply a matter of stupid word choice.)

I hope I have something new and worthwhile to show soon. I'll try and make sure I update and tell you people promptly this time. That is, if people even are here any more.

Lots of exciting things

Friday, April 30 2004 7:10 pm

So once again I am going to be going back to Milwaukee. Quite a few things have happened this week that are very much so worthy of note. I'll relay those before I pack up my computer. (I'll be bringing it with me, so that I may continue to be productive throughout the weekend.)

First, that article I co-wrote with Tobias actually got published on NewsForge. You may be wondering why that old "preview" link I gave a couple posts back doesn't work then. Well, there were a few edits made to the article before it got put up. A whole paragraph got removed, even. Oh well. I won't complain too much. But for clarification purposes, Tobias is really the one who wrote most of the article... however, English is not his primary language; German is. So I spent a lot of time fixing it up.. and making quite a few inclusions of my own thoughts along the way.

Speaking of articles getting published and such, I was surprised that the editors at Slashdot actually accepted my submission. If you haven't gone and read that, go read it now. It's important, as it concerns RFID tags. If you don't know what RFID tags are, then you especially need to go read it.

Next up, I actually got hired for my artwork! I am creating a logo for Linux Looney. I don't know what license it is going to be under yet. I hope the GNUGPL, or something Creative Commons, but I suppose that is something we will have to wait and see. I've created a beautiful version which looks very natural and painted with my graphical tablet, but I'm also working on a SVG version. Unfortunately I am no longer actually getting paid for it. Fortunately that's because of my own choice.. I'm donating all the profits to Daniel Robbins, former chief architect of Gentoo, my favorite GNU/Linux distribution. He's 20 thousand dollars in debt, and I certainly owe the Gentoo project much more than that for all that they've given me. It is only fair to help out where I can, right?

Anyway, due to all that, my RMS comic has been delayed again. Oh yeah, and there's also the problem that I kept struggling with what to do with the appearance of the last panel. Now RMS wants houses in the last panel, which is something I've been having a bit of difficulty incorporating. Mind you, I am not complaining, I enjoy this challenge. I'm just explaining things. He's right, anyway, the last panel will be much more powerful with houses in it.

Alright, enough writing already! I've got to dismantle this sucker so I can take it back to Milwaukee.

Leaving for the weekend

I'll be leaving for the weekend soon. I'm going out to visit my friends and family back home. As something I don't do often, I look forward to this. Jay should be by soon to pick me up.

I've gotten much headway in work this weekend, but I'm not nearly finished with all I need to do. That comic I am working on with RMS still needs to have its last panel completed. I am packing up my computer to bring it with me, along with my graphical tablet. I hope I have enough time to finish this this weekend. We will see. Nonetheless, it is really almost done.

So I must leave now... I am to be assembling my computer. Hopefully that comic will be up before Monday. I am disappointed that I did not finish it earlier this week... I was (and still am) having some artistic difficulties with one portion of the comic. Once I squash this artistic bug my work should be ready to go up.

I, Ought_to_get_back_to_work

Tuesday, April 20 2004 6:16 pm

Earlier today I was chatting on IRC. Due to general curiosity of what people would think of my website, I posted a link to my site. One individual on the channel asked: "So, are you one of Stallman's henchmen, or something?", a query which elicited quite a chuckle on my end. No, I'm not one of Stallman's henchmen, if he even has any. This would be the only collaboration I've done with him, and I hadn't even ever had any contact with him until somewhere around a month ago.

However, if I was a henchman, I'd be a fairly awful one. I see I do not do very well at making deadlines, which has been made clear innumerable times. If I do manage to make this post on time tonight, it will not be the norm.

I've been reading Isaac Asimov's I, Robot. This might be a mandatory book for nerds like me.

I found the book

Monday, April 19 2004 11:20 pm

I have my book again! Apparently I left it in the Student Affairs office when I was registering for housing for next quarter. A student who works there was kind enough to point it out to me. This is, however, after I read 150 pages last night from a monitor. Oh well, at least I'll save my eyes some strain in the future.

I'm getting the feeling that I talk about un-comic related life stuff a bit much on here. Ah well. As for other things, they've been held back a bit, but not much. RMS' comic should be done in the next two days.

Books and panic attacks

Sunday, April 18 2004 1:26 pm

Anyone who knows me personally knows my tendency to fall into panic attacks. It's something I'm working on, but admittedly haven't gone very far on. Well, I have a new good reason to fall into panic. I have about four hundred pages to read for tomorrow, and I can't find my book. Alright, technically three hundred pages, but I want to review one hundred of the pages that I somewhat rushed.

Well, you can imagine how I've responded to not being able to find my book... a lot of pacing around my room... I've kind of torn it apart in searching... blah. But I've checked every corner, you'd think I would be able to find it. I really hope I do soon, but it looks unlikely... I must have lost it. I've even checked all over the library. Twice! I had the security guard open up the library late last night so I could search through it, and today when the library opened, I tried again. No such luck.

It isn't just that I won't be prepared for class. I would actually think that the class could handle quite well me keeping quiet for once... but I hate having the end of a book given away to me before I've read it. And it's going to happen in class tomorrow if I don't find this book! There's also the quiz... I guess the quiz should be an issue, since that has more to do with my grade, but I'm not panicing as much about that.

I've tried to take out my frustration by doing work as well. I've gotten some done. I helped write an article, which hasn't been accepted yet, but you can preview it here. I spent a good deal of yesterday on that.... like, whenever I wasn't working on finding that book... which obviously didn't happen :\

Someone just pointed out that I can read the book on Project Gutenberg. I guess I'll just sit here and read it in Emacs, despite that that is not quite what I'd prefer to do. Oh well, it's better than nothing.

The plan, and all that sheeot.

Thursday, April 8 2004 3:21 pm

Wow, I'm putting up two posts so closely together! I stop updating for a long time, and all of a sudden I decide I need to update again. Strange.

I started using GNU Emacs yesterday. I do think this is something I could enjoy using on a daily basis. True, it sometimes feels like instead of editing or doing whatever I am doing as I normally would that I am playing Mortal Kombat instead, what with all the massive key-sequences and such.

I drew up a plan for the restructuring of the website. I do not know how long it will take me, but you will be informed as soon as I begin my work upon it. I will probably have a "development" version viewable as I work upon it. It may take me quite a bit though, as I am going to have to better learn PHP.

So, uhm, yeah.

Thursday, April 8 2004 10:58 am

Wow. I'm a slacker. Big time.

Okay, that is only partly true. I have been doing a lot of work... in the background! I hear you... "Yeah yeah yeah, how many times have we heard THAT before?" The answer is many times. I won't deny it. In fact, this is my worst case of not updating yet. Nearly two months! And just two months ago I was apologizing for not updating. Sigh.

But in the meantime, I've been working on some nifty stuff... I wrote a book (kinda) which I cannot publish, because I would like to preserve the anonymity of people involved... and they are too tightly ingrained into what I wrote for me to simply change their names to provide adequate protection. Perhaps some time in the future I will be able to make the writing public, but not at this time. Still, those who have read it have told me they've been very impressed. That, at least, is nice.

So... what you are probably wondering is, what on earth AM I doing with my time? Good question. One of the main things I am working on is contributing to a project called SuperTux. Yes, I hear you, "Good god, not another game starring Tux on Linux!" I agree with you, actually. I'm absolutely sick of every free and open source game having to star Tux... or the BSD daemon... or be against Microsoft. And that is partly why I am entering into this project. The new team that is on this is turning that around. We don't want this game to be all about geek humor, we want it to be good in its own right. You'll be surprised how good it is turning out. I promise.

And this is just what we call the "tip of the iceberg." I am working on plenty of other interesting things. But many of them don't actually qualify under the current Creative Commons license I've listed this all under; much of it qualifies under other free (as in free speech) and open licenses. So I have to better develop this website to hold the information on that.

Last bit of my rambling... schoolwork. I'm having to get myself into schoolwork all over again. I've fallen quite behind, but that is only part of it. Some of my classes I forgot why I loved to study them. I have to remind myself of that.

Anyway, no promises on when things will be up this time. I just switched servers, so things like the forums aren't up again, but I don't really care about the forums anyway, since nobody was reading them. Perhaps they will be more useful later. Updates will occur, but I am not sure when. Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps next week. It all depends on when I have time. Whether or not you choose to keep checking back to see if I've updated is up to you.

Other pretty distractions

Saturday, February 28 2004 11:56 am

To make up for my sheer incompetence, I'd like to point you toward this comic
I have just found. It struck me as... rather wise. Ladies and Gentlemen, I
give you (or, er.... Derek Kirk gives you...) An
Interview With a Human. I feel that it accurately portrays the direction our species is heading.

This wonderful comic is probably not even the most amazing of Derek's works (I picked it because I suppose that I have a very cynical audience here that likes things that make fun of Humanity). In most of his other works, his artwork goes beyond just fantastic, and often makes me feel embarrassed to call my own work a "comic," or even at times "artwork." You really ought to browse the rest of Small Stories and just waste a day reading, or a few days. It's really incredible stuff. It's making me want to buy his book.

It's been too long since my last comic.

So I'm going to try and finish this comic I started.. then neglected. It's
about halfway done, so I really don't have any excuse to complain, as much as I
do enjoy complaining.

Anyhow, I am saddened to tell you that our campaign to keep my college open was not
successful as I hoped. DePaul's Board of Trustees voted to close us down. I
feel very hurt that the board did not take the time to even listen to a single
student speak before making their decision.

Well, if things go as I hope.... updates will once again begin to happen on
this page. Regardless of that, a new Lingo comic should be up soon.
Restructuring of the site will be taking place too.

That's some funky time stamp you got on that post there

Yes, the last post says that it's from two days ago, and yet it hadn't
appeared until this night. Sorry about that, there were some funky things going
on with the server. They seem to be resolved now.

I'm tired and slightly worried about the future of my studies. This weekend
I definitely can't afford to have any visitors... I'm going to be busy the
entire time catching up on readings and such. Bleh. I'm sorry, I shouldn't be
whining... it gives the impression that I'm dissatisfied with what I'm doing.
I'm proud of myself for all that I've accomplished on KeepBarat.org... but that
doesn't keep me from worrying a bit about my studies, which have dropped back a
bit.

I'm doing what I can to bring them back up. I guess we'll just have to see
how that turns out.

Best described as "unexpected"

Monday, January 26 2004 9:35 pm

So KeepBarat.org has become something
bigger than I ever, ever expected. At least that's my perception at the moment.
But then again, I'm in shock.

So I'm told today that the Keep Barat Organization (I think it's been
semi-officially dubbed that now) has taken up a grassroots strategy. And today
at four o'clock, I was informed that the website I'm running (not this,
keepbarat.org) is going to be the center of the campaign.

It's a shock. I keep saying that to people. "Wow, this whole thing is a
shock." Maybe I don't realize I'm saying it over and over again because I'm
shocked with... you know... shock. But I've never been at the center of
something so big before. So you think I'd be worried. I mean, just a few posts
ago, I was lapsing into bad poetry at random intervals. And I'm normally a
decent poet. But it's just that whole mood swing deal. Worrying is normally
part of who I am. But I'm not worried. That's strange.

Did I mention that I'm in shock? Ah well. At least I'm not lapsing into bad
poetry.

keepbarat.org

Friday, January 23 2004 12:30 am

Remember how I mentioned about the work I'm doing to make sure my school
stays open? To further this goal I have undertaken, as of January twenty second
two thousand and four, I have taken upon the responsibility of developing and
managing the website for this goal. Alright, it's actually the twenty third
when I'm posting this... but I volunteered to do this yesterday.

The site needs to go up fast.... and it's requiring my utmost attention. So
what does this mean to you, the comic reader? I will not lie, it means that
you're going to have to wait longer.. yes, even longer, for the next
comic. But I have to divert all my extra energy toward getting this site off
the ground. On February 11th, the vote will be cast, determining the fate of
humble Barat Campus of DePaul University.

But this project needs your support hardcore. The details on what you need
to do may not be up when you read this... but if they aren't, please, check back. And
soon. I know that's a bitchy thing to ask, but I'd really appreciate it if you
did. The school that helped to foster the intelligent, creative, artistic (sort
of) individual before you is in danger of being shut down.

Keeping you updated on things

Tuesday, January 20 2004 8:24 pm

Sorry for not updating here for a little bit. Things have been a bit crazy. For one thing, there's a chance that my beloved school Barat (of DePaul) could get shut down. Not DePaul, of course... but Barat. So I've been spending a lot of energy in the movement to keep this place running.

Never fear, however. I'm still developing the comic. A few nights ago I finished the first panel for the new comic, and just tonight I got the black and white basis for the second panel done. Needless to say, things are not going as quickly as I'd like... but they're going, and that is, at least, a good thing. A friend is coming down this weekend to make so that I can help him install Gentoo on his system. I think I should be able to get some updates on here while his machine is taking the infinite void of time that is compiling an entire system from scratch.

candlewax

Thursday, January 15 2004 8:39 pm

So I've spent the last seven hours being unproductive. I guess you can say that, sure, I went to that lecture. It was interesting.
I don't know. Like so many times when I start writing, I don't know what I'm writing about.
I might be getting depressed again.
I feel like I need to get more done. And I do. I haven't finished the schoolwork I need to finish... I'm really in danger of falling behind.
I want to go walk outside. Let the wind embrace me. Maybe fly me away. Somewhere where time doesn't exist. Just for a little while.
I guess I'm going a bit crazy again...
I feel the compulsion to write this, but they really aren't words from my life. Maybe it's because I was holding incense and looking for a lighter.

I dreamt I held a candle to me flesh
And flames spread over my body
And there I was melting
As if my body were wax
The skin just slid down, slowly
It didn't burn. I was smiling.

Just a few minutes ago I took out the stylus from my graphics tablet and decided I needed to draw. Art would cure me. So I created a layer and began to sketch a rough sketch of a human. Then I lowered the opacity of that layer and drew another layer over it, meant to be a more perfect form of that human. But instead it turned out to be a different person, in a different figure. So I started squiggling off to the side and tried to draw something free-form as I listened to the sound of Ani DeFranco's voice. And when I knew what I was drawing didn't make any sense I lowered the opacity of that layer and started drawing another figure on top of that, one more detailed, more human... and yet it turned its face away from me and I noticed that it's head wasn't even the same size as the others. I dropped the stylus and walked away.

But I haven't closed the picture because I can't decide which is the worse fate, to save it or to throw it away.

And thus worked the Wacom tablet...

Tuesday, January 13 2004 1:13 am

And yea, the people did celebrate. In all my spare time today I'd been working on getting the Wacom working right. And now it works. I'm more than pleased with the result. It did take quite a bit of time to get the damned thing to do what it's supposed to, but it does work, and that makes me happy. Working. Happy making of me. Kudos to the Linux Wacom Project, or I wouldn't have been able to get this thing to work at all. Kudos also to the people at the Gentoo forums who, once again, came to my rescue. Especially this person named IntergalacticHippo. This is one of those times where I'm glad that nobody reads this, because if I were Megatokyo or whatever, just mentioning a person's screen name like that will doom that person to a billion private messages.

So I drew a simple picture of a butterfly using the airbrush. I have to say... I'm really amazed at how easy it was to do. I think it really might be possible for me to start pulling off weekly updates. That'd be amazing.

***Edit: I kept repeating words over and over again in this post. I don't know why. In the future, I'll try to diversify my vocabulary a bit more.***

New! Improved! Browsing system!

Friday, January 9 2004 9:31 pm

With an hour or two (or maybe less, Jay's not as slow as I am) of work, Jay has created a far superior comic system, developed entirely in PHP. It's just been implemented into the site. Along with that, I changed the image format from PNG to JPEG... which saddens me, because I love PNG's, but just kind of makes sense too. I mean, the jpegs look fine as they are, quality-wise. I think. But they're one fifth smaller than the PNG files. However, the other images on this site are still PNGs (they serve the task of non-photo quality pictures well).

I've just recieved word that my Wacom has come in back at my house. This excites me greatly. However, seeing as how I am an hour and fifteen minutes away from my house when I am at college, not to mention my lack of a driver's license or car, I have no idea when I'll be able to go get it.

Strange....

Wednesday, January 7 2004 8:32 pm

I don't remember doing that... I don't remember making changes to index.php to point to comic.php, which is not finished, and doesn't even point to itself. But sometime I must have. Anyway, this would have been a problem for those browsing via comic.php (in its previous state) as opposed to the comic.html that existed before. They would have only seen comics 1-4. Anyway, it's been fixed, and I did upload comic.php... even though it doesn't utilize far too much PHP yet. Soon enough I'll switch over to a completely PHP based browsing system.

Dah well. I'm supposed to be studying, but I've been playing Quake 2 and Quake 3 instead. And Quake 3 mods. It's not a good thing... I'll try and get back on track with my studies starting now, and do a bit of work on the comic. Oh... I should put up that art page too... I have a lot of interesting artwork to upload.

Lingo forums now up and running.

Monday, January 5 2004 9:35 pm

And I was just talking about the Gentoo forums in my last post. Well, now I've set up a forum for this site. I encourage you to go and talk in it. You can find a little tab for it up at the top where it plays with all of its little tab friends.

Admittedly, I'm a bit unsure of what to do with it. I'm trying to set up my own appearance on there... but I don't really know where to begin. I know I don't know where to begin because I thought I knew that I knew where to begin earlier. But I proved myself wrong. I made a couple modifications, but I can't think of anything better to do with it. Any suggestions would be appreciated. And you could go make those suggestions in the forum, of course.

There are Gentoo forum lurkers among us

Monday, January 5 2004 3:52 pm

Before I explain that title, a tiny rant. I don't claim to understand people, but really. Right before I ran off to my last class, I did a rush job of face-washing (you know, the most ineffective method), because I spent too much time playing Quake 2 this morning and thus was unable to take a shower. Apparently I didn't notice that I had this huge white splotch under my chin of facial soap that I somehow didn't get off. We're talking big here. It looked like I painted my neck. I went through an entire class, and nobody mentioned it to me. I even hung around talking to other students and even my professor, but nobody mentioned anything. It wasn't until I was in the bookshop that my friend Catlin, who was about to give me a hug, stopped and said, "What the hell is all that powder on your neck? Messy shave this morning?" I went to the bathroom to check. This wasn't something anyone could miss, really. Why didn't they say anything? I'm not embarrassed, but I'm just not sure if they thought I had gained some new kind of disease, or if it was some new fashion. You know. Where I apply makeup. Only to my neck.

All that aside, I appear to have gotten a huge number of visits this month from people, like myself, who hang around the Gentoo forums. This is all due to a bit of shameless self-promotion on my part... you can view the thread here. If you're one of these people, a specific hello to you! Due to the suggestions of these people, I'm planning on putting up a tutorial on how I make them, so that people can get to know the GIMP a bit better. It will also be useful, since I plan on releasing all the XCF files for each comic, tarballed together, so that people have a better chance to learn from/ mess around with/ or even give me suggestions on the development of my comics. Nifty, eh?

What? Winter break's over already?

Saturday, January 3 2004 4:29 pm

That title is a damned lie in that it conveys my feelings in no way whatsoever. I am quite pleased that I am going back to college again, though I will miss being able to hang out with my friends and generally bum around the house. But anyway... I'm going back tomorrow, Sunday, so I might not get to update this for a tiny bit as I settle in.

I touched up the layout of the site a bit instead of packing. I think it looks better... less "spread out" and such.

So I asked him Wacom from and he told me..

Two-thousand-four

Thursday, January 1 2004 2:46 am

Wow. It's 2004. This page was looking a bit empty. Anywho... I created a version of the game that people can play tonight.... but it's kind of boring. So I'm going to make it, hopefully, slightly more interesting, then I can put up the demo for you. I'm going to warn you though, for anyone that may read my code... same as my artwork, I am self-taught... so don't be surprised if my programming is messy.